Draft 1 is Slowly Shaping Up!

The first draft of my Author Quest submission is starting to shape up.  Last week I came up with a much more exciting beginning to the story.  With that in place, I’ve had to rework a lot of the other pieces I’d already written but it’s been well worth it.  Everything is now reading a lot better.

The main thing that I added was a new character named Keefe.  Well, he isn’t really new per se, as I had planned on using him later in the story.  But originally the opening was very bland, full of a lot of exposition and very little dialogue.  Bringing Keefe into the story right from the beginning has given me a lot of room to draw out character and move things along without having to be bogged down in explaining everything.  Of course, adding him to the beginning has meant I’ve had to change a lot, which has been a really good thing for the story.

So with that said, I originally had four sections which I wanted to keep but knew needed very much to be fixed.  I have since “fixed” three of them.  The revisions are by no means perfect, and will themselves needed to be worked on, but the story is now flowing much better since I have reworked what I have.  I’m also currently up to 6 sections and just over 4000 words (although I’m not sure where the word count will be once I make the necessary revisions to that remaining unfixed section).

One thing I’m not really sure about yet is whether to submit my story in chapters or not.  So far I’ve just been separating the different sections and not worrying about it, but I have identified one place where I could easily put in a chapter break.  I’m not too worried about this right now though; I’ll just have to decide when I’m getting closer to submitting this story.

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An Outline for Author Quest

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on creating a rough outline for my entry to the Dark Crystal Author Quest.  I’ve been playing around with characters and plot a little bit, making a working outline, which I’ve been modifying as needed.  About a day or two ago, I had an outline which I was relatively happy with.  I also re watched the movie a few days ago with some friends.  We talked a bit about how the Skeksis were, giving me some ideas for writing a few scenes.  So all in all, I felt ready to start my first draft.

Then today, I was doing a bit of research on the Emperor, skekSo, and totally had my mind blown.  In the movie you don’t get to know much about him (besides that he is terrifying to the other Skeksis, as evidenced by their interactions with him), so I was trying to get a feel for how to write a scene with him in it.  And it turns out that the young skekSo is pretty much the opposite of how I envisioned him.  But it doesn’t matter: the opposite is so much better!

Armed with this new information, I’ve got to rework my outline a bit.  But I am super excited for where I can take things now that I have a better understanding of his character.

It’s at times like these that I really love writing!

Dark Crystal Author Quest

A few months ago, a friend of mine saw a link to the Dark Crystal Author Quest.  The Jim Henson Company is looking for an author to pen a new novel in the Dark Crystal universe and my friend wants me to enter it (of course, this is also the same friend who every time I see her, she asks if I’m rich and famous yet.  So I think this is her way of encouraging me towards fame and fortune and the eventual lending of said future fortunes).

When I first heard of the contest, I was excited for it, but had a really hard time thinking of the Dark Crystal as a universe; for me, the film has always seemed self-contained.  So over the summer I got my hands on some of the graphic novels (notably Creation Myths Vol 1 and 2, and Legends of the Dark Crystal: the Garthim War).  Reading through those books made the world come alive for me in a way that the movie never really seemed to.  Sure, there were some things that seemed a little wrong to me in the new stories (the movie always made me think there used to be many Skeksis and Mystics, not just eighteen because of the line “Yet now, there are only ten: a dying race, ruled by a dying Emperor, imprisoned within themselves in a dying land”).  But now the Dark Crystal seems much more than just the story of Jen and Kira; now it actually feels like a land with many more stories.

The contest officially opened earlier this week and runs to the end of December.  I have an idea for a story, so wish me luck as I fix it up and submit it in the coming months!